Bill Rojas. Mike Moses. Michael Hinojosa. Mike Miles.
That’s a list of the four people who have been Dallas ISD superintendent in the past 15 years. And if some on the current board of trustees have their way tomorrow at 4 p.m., Dallas public schools will be looking at a fifth superintendent in 15 years. In fact, someone pointed out to me earlier (and then I went back and did the math) that in 20 years, only one DISD superintendent has been here long enough to see a freshman class graduate.
Some on the school board wish to fire Mike Miles. They’ve made no bones about it for quite some time. And tomorrow, they intend to do so.
I have never made a secret of my irritation at some of Miles’ missteps in the beginning, like the hiring of the overpaid communications director, for one. But the man has a vision and is a reformer. And reform we do need. In a district with a poverty rate of 90 percent, and a student homeless population of over 4,000, we need reform. When we have students who can’t read at grade level or above, we need reform. When schools fail to perform up to expectations, we need reform.
But we don’t like it. Reform means change, and change is painful and nobody likes pain. But we don’t like the school-to-prison pipeline we’ve got, either. We don’t like that it’s a tooth-and-nail fight to get the middle class in the city to see their neighborhood schools for the gems they are, but also to see that even gems need polishing.
So we have to decide, right now, today, if we want stability and the chance at real reform, or if we really are content to let yet another superintendent walk the plank. We need to decide if our children need to be in a place where all the programs just starting to get a foothold will be scrapped because of yet another new administration. We have to decide today, and then we have to tell our school board our desires (even if you disagree with me and think he should be fired). Send them Facebook messages. Email them. Call them.
Because here’s the deal: I do not know if Mike Miles’ reforms will work. And I do know that there have been some bumps – some significant – in his administration (like the HR management issue). But I do know that if he isn’t given the latitude to do his job, these reforms will indeed fail. And if we fire one more superintendent, we will have had potentially 5 in 15 years (Rojas, Moses, Hinojosa, Miles, and whoever they can rope into accepting the helm after him). That’s not stability. An average of three-four years per super is not enough time to implement real changes.
Miles shows signs of promise so far. The district is in the best financial health it has been in years. For every five teachers I meet, four tell me they are excited and energized by the potential of earning more money, getting better coaching and better direction. Energized, enthusiastic teachers mean energized, enthusiastic learners, which in turn mean better schools. Principals go through more rigorous coaching and evaluations before they even become principals. There is a renewed focus on concrete early childhood education, where we get the most bang for our buck and where the interventions happen that mean kids are more likely to read at grade level by third grade – which means that test scores will eventually go up. All of this happened on Miles’ watch.
And who, really, would want this job if our board fires yet another superintendent? No real reformer is going to want a job that has a very real danger of ending before it really had a chance to begin. We have the appearance of a nasty habit of firing or running off superintendents just as they’ve begun to roll their sleeves up and work. Will this attract top talent to the district? Does our school board exacerbate the challenges of an urban district so much that our challenging district becomes an impossible one?
I don’t know the answers to those questions, by the way. But I do know that what DISD needs is time, and a school board that will recognize it and allow it.
